Old Meets New
by Tam Cranver
Summary: Seven preteens from the near future, another anti-yeerk group, meet the old Animorphs and begin planning to counter the Yeerks' next move.


  
  


Disclaimer: The concepts of Animorphs and Yeerks and Controllers all belong to K.A. Applegate. The name Crazy John and the Bishops is based on the title of a book I saw in my father's office once. If I ever find out the author of this book, I'll put their name(s) here too. Seeley, Yuki, Joel, Gabe, Zody, Devi, Gack, Avocado, and any other character not mentioned in the Animorphs books belong to me. Please don't use them without my permission. I'm assuming that Nintendo is owned by Nintendo, unless that corporation is owned by someone else. I'm also assuming that Weird Al Yankovic owns himself. With all that said, enjoy!

  
  


1.

Seeley

  
  


Hi. My name's Seeley, and I'm 14 years old. I'm a boy. Before you start snickering, shut up. My name is not that weird and there's no real reason to make fun of me. There are many reasons why I can't give out my last name or where I live: For one, how do I know who's reading this? You could be a weirdo who's going to start stalking me. For another, I'd get junk mail. I know those people. You know, the ones that try to sell 5-year olds credit cards. Finally, because there are some people who would really like to get their hands on that information so they can kill me. 

The reason they want to kill me is that I know who they are and what they're doing. Who they are: Yeerks, slugs from outer space with bigger ego problems than my sister Arthardis-and if you know her, you will know that this is an incredible feat. What they're doing: attempting-and actually doing a pretty good job of-taking over the world, one person at a time. See, they can get in your mind and take over. You still exist in there, but you're not in charge any more. The Yeerk in your head controls how you move, what you say, what you eat...more on that from somebody else, some other time. It depresses me to talk about it.

Anyway, they also want to kill me because I can turn into any animal I get my greedy little hands on and I use this against them. I can turn into a tiger, a bird, anything for two hours at a time. Any longer and I get stuck like that. This is not a natural ability, so I'll get into that more later. But I am not alone in this. I belong to this group called Crazy John and the Bishops-check up on your English/Irish literature. The rest of the Bishops and I were meeting in our secret place-Devi's tree house. We have yet to find Crazy John.

Since you don't know who any of the Bishops are, I will go around in the circle, starting at the highest position. The Pope (he provides our moral advice) is my twin brother Yuki. (Shut up.) He looks pretty much like me-we have blond hair and green eyes. He, however, has an interesting sense of fashion that involves dressing like Austin Powers. He's a very odd lad. Of course, that may be because he has 14 brothers and sisters. Trust me, you live in the same family with 12 older siblings, a twin, and a little sister, even when only your twin and two sisters still actually live at the house, things get a bit hectic. The Cardinal is our best friend, Joel. Joel is very quiet and moody. He kicks butt at football and Mario Party 7, but he is not very good at basketball. He's great at science and gets good grades.

The Priest is Gack, a rather geeky fellow in our math class. His real name is Zach, but we cross it with "geek" to form Gack. He doesn't mind. In fact, he is very proud of his reputation as a geek and brags about it, which is why he is known as extremely obnoxious. There is only one word to describe his looks, and that word is weasel-like. He looks so much like a weasel it is not even funny. The Reverend is Gabe (Short for Galabriel) , a friend of Gack's and a real athlete. She's way taller than me and she's got red hair that reaches to her knees. She always wears it up though, for obvious reasons. She takes no nonsense from anyone.

The Friar is Zody, (short for Zodiac) Gabe's little sister. Zody's a year younger than Gabe, Yuki, Gack, Avocado, Joel and I. She's really enthusiastic about anything out of the ordinary. She also has a thing for languages-she speaks Greek, Welsh, Latin, French, and Irish Gaelic, if only to herself, because as you've noticed there aren't a lot of people who understand a few of those. The Vicar is Devi, Zody's best friend. She's 13, like Zody. She's from India and has exceedingly shiny black hair and foolproof logic. She's very smart, but also kind of obnoxious. Finally, there's Avocado, the Rabbi. His real name is Andrew or Alan or something, I don't remember. Nobody calls him that but teachers. He's...well...a hippy. A full out, tie-dyed tee-shirt, granola eating, long-haired hippy. There's really no other way to describe him.

Back to whatever I was talking about earlier. Give me a minute...oh yeah. We were in Devi's tree house, our secret spot, and we were talking about what Crazy John and the Bishops always talk about; Yeerks. Only we weren't at the moment. Avocado and Joel hadn't arrived, so the rest of us were just kind of blabbing on and on and...you get the picture. It was almost summer break, and all of us (with the exception of Gack) were looking forward to three months of pure, unadulterated freedom. 

Devi was just telling us how her neighbor from across the street, Jake, was coming back. 

"He is pretty cool," she said. "He is 21 or something now, so he has been in college." I might have mentioned, Devi speaks without contractions and with a British accent.

"Why are we interested in this?" Gack asked sardonically.

"I do not care if _you_ are interested, _Zachary_," Devi said. When she's really irritated at Gack, she calls him Zachary. Same with the rest of us, except of course for Avocado. Well, I mean, she doesn't call us all Zachary, I mean she calls us by our full names. In some of our cases, since we already go by our full names, she uses our middle names too. "Whether _you_ are listening or not, I will continue to report news from my neighborhood. As I was _going_ to be saying, and Zachary, you might be interested in this too, Jake's girlfriend, Cassie, and his cousin Rachel will also be coming back. Cassie and Rachel are both very good-looking. Of course, I am quite sure that both of them are far, _far_ out of your league." She finished off with a glare towards Gack.

"How do you know all this stuff?" I asked.

"I have several connections, Seeley."

"Ahh," Yuki said, his left eyebrow raised.

"Dudes and dudettes! Have I, like, missed anything? Oh, and Joel, like, told me to tell you guys that he's like, on the way." I bet you have already figured out that the speaker is Avocado.

"Hey, Avocado," Zody said. Gabe has told me she suspects that her sister has a crush on Avocado. Ick. I mean, I like the guy as a friend and everything, but unless there's something I'm really missing here, there's nothing that would make him very attractive to girls. For one, he's always wearing huge sunglasses, so you can rarely see his face. I've seen it, and it's not the best face in the world. He's got all these little red dots on his face from where he's been picking at his pimples and it looks like he's a man who forgets to shave because he never washes his face. So why in the world does Avocado have girls with crushes on him, and not me? It's just not fair!!

Well, forget I said that. Anyway, a few minutes after Avocado arrived, Joel decided to grace us with his presence. So all the Bishops were there and we could start the meeting. I was about to bring up the topic of the Sharing, a club thing that we think is a front for Yeerks, when Gabe, who had been pretty quiet for her, turned really pale and said, "Seeley, shut up. We've got company."

I turned around. There was a young man-well, I mean, he was older than us, like in his early twenties-standing on the ladder. He was solid-looking and big, with brown hair and eyes. Devi grinned. "Hello, Jake."

"Hey, Devi. Where's your mom?"

"I do not know. Would you like to meet my friends? I do not believe I have introduced any of them to you before."

"Sure. Can I get in the tree house first, though?" Hmm. The guy sounded okay, and Devi, who is an excellent judge of character, seemed to like him.

Once he got in, Devi drew herself up to her full, albeit very short height. "Guys, this is my neighbor, Jake. Jake, these are Crazy John and the Bishops. This is Seeley and his twin brother Yuki," she said, pointing towards Yuki and me. "This is my best friend Zody and her sister Gabe." Zody grinned and Gabe nodded. "This is _Zachary_." Gack glared at Devi. "This is Joel, and this is Avocado." Joel smiled slowly, and Avocado, being the fellow he is, said, "Totally radical to meet you, dude."

Jake smiled and said, "Right back at you. This place is really cool. You guys do all the decorating?"

I'll admit it, Devi's tree house is pretty cool. She's really into "Weird Al" Yankovic and Star Wars, and she has posters of both hanging up. The inside of the tree house is painted sky blue, and she's got foil stars hanging from the ceiling.

"Yep," Zody said proudly. "I helped Devi with all of this."

Suddenly, Jake stiffened. "What's that?" He pointed to a picture of Selenia-Margouda-Madaya, our role model and the person-well, alien that gave us the power to morph. Devi, who is also an aspiring photographer, took that picture before Selenia died an early death from some Andalite disease. I've told her she should hide that photo and not hang it in our tree house or anything, but of course she never listens to me.

"Oh, that," Yuki said, quickly stepping in front of it before Jake could get a closer look. "I found it on the internet. Pretty cool, eh?"

"Yeah. Cool." Jake seemed distracted. "It's been great, guys, but I've got to go. Devi, sure you don't know where your mom is?" 

Devi, evidently caught off guard said, "In the kitchen."

Jake got out and climbed down the ladder. I exchanged glances with Joel. I could tell he was thinking the same thing I was thinking. Jake had acted pretty suspiciously about the picture. Maybe it meant nothing, and maybe it meant he was a Yeerked. What would Devi think?

  
  


2.

Jake

  
  


I'll admit it, I was worried. That was definitely a picture of an Andalite in Devi's tree house. And then that one kid, Yuki, had tried to hide it. Was Yuki a controller? If he was, chances are his twin was too. And what about Devi? She was a really nice little girl, but was she also a controller? I needed to talk to someone.

Hi. My name is Jake. You may know me from some other accounts about the Yeerk resistance. I'm the unofficial leader of a group called the Animorphs. I'd been fighting Yeerks by myself in college-kind of a one-man army, but in the summer, I usually joined up with the old group. Cassie and Rachel went to the same college, and they wouldn't get there until the next day. Riding on the same plane, of course. Those two will always be best friends. Ax had gone back to the Andalite home world, not for forever, just to finish his education. Still, I missed him a lot. The Andalites didn't bring ships down very often, so I hadn't seen him in almost a year. Marco and his dad were visiting his (Marco's) grandparents for a while. I guess the only one still around was Tobias.

I concentrated on becoming a peregrine falcon. You know, I've been morphing a lot for the past decade, but it's still one of those things you can't really get used to. It should hurt, but it doesn't really hurt. It just feels bizarre. In the beginning, we hadn't been able to morph regular clothing, but thankfully, we had worked out that little trick. The first thing that happened was that my nice baggy clothing and I began to shrink. I shrank until I was like, one foot high. It was a weird feeling, like falling without ever hitting the ground.

My beak started to poke out of my face, and my vision became sharper. Wing patterns, like incredibly realistic tattoos, began to trace themselves over my skin, then pop out. My organs did who knows what. Morphing is a very odd procedure. But at the end, you're an entirely different animal, and I was now a peregrine falcon. I spread my wings and tried to remember where Ax had lived. Tobias still lived in his tree, but he had a few things like clothes that he kept in Ax's scoop, and besides, his tree was near where Ax was.

Finally, I found the scoop. Maybe I took a bit longer than I needed, but you really can't help it. Flying is so incredibly cool. Tobias? I asked in thought-speak, the telepathy we use in morph. Tobias? 

"Over here, Jake. In the scoop."

I was kind of surprised. Tobias was in human morph. I flew into the scoop and demorphed. Tobias looked up and grinned. "Ah. So, what brings you to this neck of the woods?"

Tobias has kind of unkempt dark blond hair and blue eyes. Right now, they were framed by glasses, something he hadn't need pre-Elfangor but did now to adjust from his hawk vision. We had originally been worried, when Tobias got the power to morph again, that his DNA would not age and that he'd remain a child forever. Evidently we were wrong, as we realized when some of our insect DNA began to die off and we had to acquire new ones. Tobias looked every bit as old as he ought, maybe a bit older at the moment. He had books strewn all over a small table. I picked one up. "Advanced Particle Physics?" I read the title aloud.

He smiled at me. "As if you're the only one who can attend college, Fearless Leader."

"You got into college??" Maybe I shouldn't have sounded as shocked as I did.

"You sound surprised. What, do you doubt my intelligence?" I couldn't tell if he was upset or not.

"No, it's just...you're a bird!!"

"That's why they have bathrooms, Jake."

I shook myself out of it. There was no reason why Tobias shouldn't go to college. I mean, he had every right to. He was smart, and he deserved to have something good going on. I don't know why it bothered me to have other people interacting with him. Maybe I was too used to being one of his only friends. Well, I couldn't let some deep psychological problem mess up why I came in the first place.

"Tobias, I saw an Andalite."

He looked up at me sharply.

"Well, not a real Andalite, a picture of one." He sighed and squinted at a book on calculus again. "It was hanging in these kids' tree house. When I asked them about it, one of them stepped in front of it so I couldn't see and passed off some phony info about it being off the internet."

"So, what do you think's going on? Is there any real reason to suspect that he didn't get it off the internet?"

"Well, I don't know. It's just this feeling I have. And even if he did get it off the internet, is that any better? Who knows what kind of stuff there is, and how easy it is for Yeerks to find? I think we should check it out, that is, if you're not too busy with homework."

"Whose tree house was it?"

"My neighbor, Devi's. You know, the little girl from India. Boy, has she got some weird friends. I mean weird, even for middle schoolers. As in, they call themselves, "Crazy John and the Bishops." We weren't weird at that age, were we?"

Tobias looked at me and smiled a bit wistfully. "You probably weren't." He stretched out and yawned. "Well, there's only so much learning a man can cram in five hours. Let's go check it out. Dragonfly?"

"Sure."

*****

We flew over to Devi's tree house again. All the kids were there, including the weird hippy one. We heard voices in weird bug hearing and tried to associate it with the people, whom I told Tobias about.

"Do you really think it's a front, Seeley?" Zody was asking.

"Well, there's not really much doubt. Over 90% of our tracked Yeerkeds belong to the Sharing. That can't be a coincidence!!"

"Hey, all. What do you think of that dude, Jake? Like, he totally freaked out at the picture of our mentor."

"I don't know, Avocado." Since the twin talking earlier was Seeley, the one talking now must have been Yuki. "He seemed really freaked. He's not one of our tracked Yeerkeds, but his older brother, Tom, is."

"Tom?" That was the girl, Gabe.

"Yeah! He's training to be a lawyer, lives in a really big house downtown?"

"Oh, him!!"

Jake, Tobias said excitedly, I think these guys are anti-Yeerk!! That's why they know about Andalites!

Yeah, I said, but I wasn't sure. Maybe this was a trap. I wouldn't put it past the Yeerks. Maybe they had wanted to catch us in the past, but at this point they were desperate. Our moving to different colleges had made them think there were more bands of Andalites out there. 

"So, any ideas about who to induct next? It's been six months since the last one, when young Devi and Zody joined us," Joel said.

"I have an idea," Devi said. Zody must have been looking at her funny or something, because she quickly revised, "Zody and I have an idea. There is a boy at our school who goes by the name of Retro Jimmy Spackle."

"He goes by _that_? Why? What's his real name?"

"James Spackle." 

And I thought I had it bad. Poor kid, Tobias muttered.

"His name is beside the point. He is definitely not a Yeerked; we've been tracking him. Also, he is pretty self confident and not likely to be a traitor."

Jeez, Tobias!! They induct new animorphs, like a club! That's so risky! I shrieked.

Tobias gave me a mental shrug. They already have more members than the original animorphs had. None of them seem to be dead.

"The real question," Zachary asked, "is whether you're sure we can trust him. Is anybody else in his family a Yeerked?"

I couldn't be sure with dragonfly eyes, but it seemed that everyone was glaring at him. I thought it was a reasonable question. Then I looked at Joel. His head was hung and he looked as if he might cry.

"Shut up, Gack!" Gabe hissed.

"Sorry, Joel. No offense. I'm just saying it might be safer if his whole family's clean. Are you getting me?"

"Yeah." Joel sniffed. "It's okay, weasel boy."

Ahh. I guess Joel had a controller, or Yeerked, as these kids seemed to call them, in the family.

Poor kid. I said to Tobias.

"Who said that?" Seeley asked. "Is anybody in morph?"

Jake, you moron! Tobias yelled. You did public freaking thought-speak!

"No, you idiot!" Gack said. "It's a trap!! Everybody, battle morphs! Prepare for Vissser One of the worst kind! He could be anywhere!"

Oh man. These kids were going to track us down if we didn't fly the coop quickly. Still, I couldn't help being amazed at their quick morphing. The kids had talent. Too much talent. 

I found them!! There are two of them! Two dragonflies! There's only one Visser Three. What should I do??" It was Zody in cat morph. She had morphed faster than Tobias and I could get away.

Kill 'em both. Gabe said.

Cripes. It was now or never.

  
  


3.

Yuki

  
  


It was really an odd occurrence. Our meetings had never been bugged before. I wasn't sure if Zody should kill both of the dragonflies; but to tell you the truth, I was too scared to object. Before Zody (who makes a really good cat) could pounce, the dragonflies started to change. Grow. They were morphing. AHHHHHHHH!!! Zody involuntarily screamed. TWO VISSER THREES!

The two creatures continued to morph-pretty darn slowly, if you ask me-and turned into Devi's neighbor, Jake, and a hawk, which slowly turned into another twenty-something year old man with blond hair and glasses. Hey, I heard Gabe mutter to Gack, It's you in ten years!

"Hold your fire, guys." Jake actually looked kind of scared, as did the other guy. "I'm not a controller and I don't even really need to prove it!"

The unfamiliar word confused the rest of us, who were demorphing as quickly as possible.

The other man, besides Jake, whistled under his breath. "Jeez, you guys are fast!"

  
  


"Comes with practice," I said. "What's a controller, and how come you can morph?"

"Well, from what I can gather from your conversation," the blond guy said, "a controller to us is like a Yeerked to you."

"Why do you call them controllers?" Devi asked. "The hosts are not doing the controlling, the Yeerks are!"

The guy shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "That's what we've always called them."

"The point," Jake broke in, "is that we fight the Yeerks too and there's no real reason to call down the armies." Must be an adult saying.

"How do we know that?" Gabe asked suspiciously.

"Well, Visser Three's the only Yeerk with a morph-capable host. I can morph, and I'm not Visser Three, so voila! I'm not a con-a Yeerked!" 

"Yeah," Gack said, unimpressed. "But until now, we thought we were the only morph-capable humans. Evidently we were wrong about that. Perhaps we were wrong about there being only one morph-capable Yeerk."

"Trust me. We're not Yeerkeds," the blond guy said.

"Who the heck are you, anyway?" Seeley asked.

"This is my friend Tobias," Jake said. "He's a hawk."

"Hmm. That explains the morphing pattern," Gack said thoughtfully. "But how is it that you can morph if you're a hawk? Unless we vastly underestimate animal intelligence or you're some form of hawk-like alien, I just don't see how it could work."

"Well, see, I got trapped in hawk morph past the two-hour limit. I lived as a hawk for a long time. Then the Ellimist came and gave me back the power to morph and my own DNA, so I can be human for two hours at a time."

"The Ellimist?" Devi asked. "What is that?"

Jake traded glances with Tobias, then said, "Big intergalactic meddler. Gets us into these dangerous missions, but usually gets us out of them."

"Ahh. So how is it that you two came to be able to morph in the first place?" Gack asked.

Tobias cleared his throat and said, "It's not just us. There were three other kids there when it happened, Jake's cousin Rachel, his friend Marco, and Rachel's friend, Cassie. An Andalite ship landed there. Prince Elfangor-you know who he is?" We all nodded. "Well, he gave us the morphing power and told us we had to use it to fight the Yeerks. But this was all, like, eight or nine years ago. So how about you guys? How can you morph?"

"Radically enough, dude, your version of it is like, really similar to ours. Like, two years ago, Seeley, Yuki, Gabe, Joel and I were hiking or something in the woods-you dudes remember? I, like, can't think of what we were doing out there."

"I remember," I said. "Joel, Seeley and I had been playing soccer at the park and were going home. Gabe was putting her old pumpkin from Halloween away. Avocado, I think you were out there to commune with nature or something."

"Ahh," Avocado said.

"Anyway, we were all in this woods at the same time when we come across this creature, this Andalite sleeping in the woods. I mean, we didn't know it was an Andalite at the time. It turned out to be this really cool scientist, Selenia-Margouda-Madaya. She gave us the power to morph with her nifty little Escafil device, then tutored us on fighting the Yeerks and Andalite science. I've gotten A+'s in science to this very day. But then...." I trailed off, not wanting to talk about how she had died.

Seeley could see how uncomfortable I was, and spoke up. "She wasn't old or anything, but she wasn't very healthy at all. She had some Andalite disease-she never told us what it was called because she didn't like to talk about it. Just about a year ago, she...passed away."

Gabe took over. "It was just the five of us then, so we tried to fight the Yeerks. But for our first couple of battles, we weren't very cautious, and Gack saw us morphing in the science lab. So we made Gack one of us. Then, I was finding I was having a really hard time keeping all of this from Zody. She's very observant, and what's more we spend a lot of time together. Sooner or later, she was bound to stumble on us morphing like Gack had. So we decided to make her one of us, too, but while I was explaining this all to her, she neglected to mention that Devi was in the bathroom listening to everything. This happened about six months ago."

"Wow," Tobias said. "Elfangor got killed the first night we saw him, by Visser Three. We've been fighting ever since."

Zody frowned. "How in the world did you figure out what to do without help?"

Jake shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe we had more information in front of us."

"Assets?" Gack asked.

"I beg your pardon?" asked Tobias.

"What I mean is, who are your allies and what kind of equipment do you have?"

"Oh," Tobias said. He looked at Jake. "You want me to take this one?"

"Go ahead."

"Okay. We've got the animorphs; Rachel, Cassie, Marco, Jake and me; we've got Ax, an Andalite, if you count him as an animorph; we've got the Chee, which are a race of Pemalite androids (Pemalites were these aliens from a long time ago who created the Chee.); we've actually got some Yeerks on our side; and a colony of free Hork-Bajir. Am I forgetting anyone?" Perhaps it wasn't worth mentioning that we already knew the Chee.

Jake shrugged again. "I don't know. I've been at college; I haven't really been thinking about it. Anyway, Ax can make just about anything by way of equipment. He is, after all, an Andalite."

  
  


"Wow," Gabe said. "So, we're not the only Yeerk fighters. Free Hork-Bajir?"

  
  


"Whoa." Gack sounded kind of-I don't know, out of touch with reality. Of course, he's like that a lot, so I usually think nothing of it. "Hey, Azani's calling us!!"

  
  


"Who?" asked Jake. Oh yeah. We hadn't told them about Azani. Perhaps you haven't even heard of it. Azani's an alien, almost like a telepathic puddle of water. We discovered it when it sought us out after landing on Earth. It, too, is Anti-Yeerk.

  
  


"Azani's another alien. I'm sure you'll meet it at some point. It lives in the sewer system and gives us information," Seeley explained.

  
  


"Dudes, I don't mean to wreck this dig, but Joel and I have got, like, patrol duty at Yeerk Pool 4." Avocado shrugged apologetically.

  
  


Joel checked his watch. "Oh yeah. I forgot about that. Well, I'll see you all around. Seeley, Yuki, you guys covering the nightshift on number 2?"

  
  


"As far as I know," I said.

  
  


"Well, I'm going to go see what it was Azani wanted." Gack always hears Azani before us. He's really bonded to it. 

  
  


"I'll go with you," Gabe said. "It's too dangerous down there to go on your own." Seeley, Joel and I have determined through logical deduction that Gabe has a thing for Gack, if you get my drift. Disgusting. Why is it the geek and the hippy get all the girls, no offense to either of them? And as far as I know, neither Gack nor Avocado have mutual crushes upon their..um...crushees. I just don't get romance.

  
  


"Hey," Seeley said to Jake and Tobias, "sometime, can we meet the rest of your group? We'd be interested in seeing what kind of tactics you guys use."

  
  


"Sure," said Tobias. "You guys have actually got pool guarding times worked out; that's much more organized than anything we did."

  
  


"That was Gack's idea," Devi said.

  
  


"Well, I'll see you guys around. Hey, Tobias, want to come over to my house?"

  
  


"Sure, as long as I get some time to demorph and Tom's not around."

  
  


Tobias and Jake left the tree house. Joel and Avocado and Gack and Gabe followed them down the ladder. Seeley looked at me and shrugged. "So much for a meeting. Want to play Super Smash Brothers 5 on my brand new N256?" He will never let me live it down that he saved the money for the Nintendo before me. Twins. Can't live with them, can't live without them.

  
  


So Seeley and I left. I guess Zody and Devi wanted to hang out in the tree house some more, because they didn't follow us.

  
  


4

Tobias

Well, that had certainly been interesting. I had wondered if maybe there were other humans against the Yeerks, but I hadn't really expected a full-fledged group. Jake and I walked over to his house, which was of course not very far. 

"So, what classes are you taking in college?" Jake asked.

"Huh?" I hadn't really been paying attention.

"You still want to major in ornithology?"

"Oh...um, I'm just taking your basic courses. A math class, a biology class, a physics class, a literature class and a....medieval studies class."

"Medieval studies?" Jake asked skeptically. "Didn't take you for the knightly type."

I snorted and pretend-punched him. He grinned. "It's good to finally see you doing something Yeerk-free with all that spare time of yours, man."

"Yeah, I think so. Just in case the Ellimist brings out another loophole for which he is so famous-

"Notorious," Jake interrupted.

"I'll be kind of reintroduced into the human world."

"Cool." 

"Simply out of curiosity, has anybody been asking for me? It just seems kind of weird that after the DeGroot guy told me about my dad, you know, way back when, nobody bothered trying to...I don't know, give me back to my aunt or uncle."

  
  


"No. Were you expecting anybody to?"

  
  


"No, not really. Just wondering." We reached Jake's house. It's a really nice place. Jake's parents take good care of it, you know, painting and trimming the weeds and keeping it clean and whatnot. "Mom? Dad?" Jake yelled. There wasn't any answer. He shrugged. "Well, I guess it's just the two of us then. What do you want to do?"

  
  


"I don't know. We seriously need Marco here. He always has ideas on what to do in your spare time."

  
  


"Even if they're really bad ideas."

  
  


"Yeah. When's he getting back?"

  
  


"Next week, sometime."

  
  


"Hey, Jake. Who's the other midget?" I turned around. It was Tom, Jake's older brother and a controller. Uh-oh.

  
  


"This is my friend, um..." Jake paused.

  
  


"Jeff!" I threw in. 

  
  


"Yeah, Jeff. He's from one of my classes in college, and it turns out his family lives around these parts, so he's hanging out here."

  
  


"Ahh. Well, lemme tell you, never go into law. I have crammed more obscure laws into my head than anyone will ever need to know. Well, I'm going out. Where are Mom and Dad, Jake?"

  
  


"I dunno."

  
  


"All righty then. See you later, Jake, Jeff."

  
  


Tom left and we heard his car back out of the driveway. We exchanged glances, and Jake shrugged. "What can I say? I didn't expect him to be here, he's always so busy. You know, he's almost the leader of our town's Sharing, right under Chapman."

  
  


"He still calls you midget? You're twenty-two and a half years old!"

  
  


"Well, he's been getting new Yeerks really frequently nowadays, and none of them bother to make up any new habits, they just play on the ones he already has."

  
  


"Hmmm. Well, want to go on the computer? I've always wanted to see what kind of computers they've got out nowadays."

  
  


"Okay." We went upstairs to Jake's old room, the one he stays in when he's home from college. His computer was incredibly cool looking. It was transparent green and the keyboard was on a little platform.

  
  


"Wow," I said. "To think, the last time I saw a computer, they were all grey and boring."

  
  


"Yep," Jake said proudly. "It's got a Pentium 6 processor at 3 kilohertz. Top o' the line."

  
  


"Can I try her out?"

  
  


"Sure." I flipped on the switch, and it immediately turned on, I mean without making any weird boot-up noises. It had "Windows 2005," whatever that was. Man, was I out of it.

  
  


"How do you get online?" I asked Jake. 

  
  


"This little button here." He pressed a finger to the screen and instantly I was on his homepage. It was just then that I noticed there was no mouse. Boy oh boy was this ever cool. I thought for a moment about what I wanted to do, now that I was online.

  
  


"Hey, Jake, what was their group called? I mean, Devi and Joel and Avocado and all of them."

  
  


"Um...Crazy John and the Bishops, I think."

I went to a search engine and typed in 'Crazy John and the Bishops.' Four sites came up. Three of them were book sites. One of them was created by someone called "Gack74."

  
  


5

J o e l

It was late, past one o'clock. I have a tendency to stay up very late on the weekends, and in summer, I rarely got much sleep. I don't even know if it's voluntary, or just some instinct of my brain. Anyway, I was also bored. I couldn't really do a lot-my dad, my little brother Kevin and my little sister Turtle were all asleep. Kevin's a Yeerked, so one has to be really careful around him, despite the fact that he's only 8. The Yeerk in his head is really interested in my dad, so it's always my duty to look out for Dad and Turtle and keep an sharp eye on Kevin. Simply because this is something I do late at night, I got on the computer and checked my e-mail. I had three messages: One from Seeley and Yuki, one from Gack, and one from....BBall24, whoever that was.

I checked the one from the twins first. "Hey Joel!" it read. "Finished late shift. Zody and Devi are on patrol. Nothing unusual. Yuki counted about 15 new controllers. We'll ID them ASAP. Seeley &Yuki."

Now the one from Gack. "Cardinal, we have major-o news from our little friend from the sewers. Meet me in our place online at 1:30. I think the twins, Gabe, and Avocado will be there too. Priest"

Finally, the one from the unknown Bball24. "Hey, it's Jake." Jake, as in the other Yeerk fighter? "How many known controllers have you got tabs on? Also, I think you should check out this page on Yeerks. Very interesting stuff." There was a link at the bottom of the e-mail.

Hmm. This ally business was proving to be pretty cool. I was looking forward to meeting the rest of their group. I mean, if this group had been in our own town, how many more groups of Yeerk fighters might there be in the state or the country? How many had morphing capabilities? Were there any Andalites on Earth that we didn't know about? This could majorly bring about the downfall of Yeerkdom!

Well, it didn't pay to get too enthusiastic. Anyway, I didn't have time to sit up and think of this all night. I had to meet Gack in his favorite place-GackChat, his own chat room. He has time and time again assured us that it's safe, but just in case, it's protected. Anyone who isn't one of the Bishops will have his computer shut down by a mini-virus should he happen across the site. Also, there are no records of any of our chats because we delete all memory of them after they're done. Gack is really obsessed with computers. So anyway, I logged in. I trust you. This is basically what went on between us.

JoCard3711: Hello!

YKTwin2: Hey, that you, Card?

JoCard3711 (that's me): Yup, your popeness. 

SLTwin1: Hey. Have you seen the guest of honor?

JoCard3711: Nope. What is it that he wanted to talk about?

YKTwin2: How should we know? We were on Yeerk duty, 'member?

WoPeacenGu: Yo, dudes! 'Tis I, Rabbi Guacamole! 

YKTwin2: Simply out of curiosity, what does your screen name stand for?

WoPeacenGu: World Peace & Guacamole

SLTwin1: That is truly bizarre.

WoPeacenGu: Perhaps, dude, but you have to admit, it, like, fits.

SoccerGabe: Hello, all. Where's Gack? This was his meeting, and if he's gonna get me up at midnight, the little weasel had better show.

WoPeacenGu: Totally.

JoCard3711: Who's going to fill the Friar and the Vicar in on this?

SoccerGabe: I will. She's my sister, after all. 

Gack74: Hello, Bishops. I have arrived!

SLTwin1: Do you expect applause?

YKTwin2: (Crickets Chirping.)

JoCard3711: Finally! So, what's the big scoop from Azani?

Gack74: The Yeerks, it seems, have been planning this for a while. They're developing a technology that will detect which species a creature is.

SLTwin1: Jeez! This means that those slugs suspect something! :-0

Gack74: You bet.

SoccerGabe: How in the world will they pull that off? Does it just scan your DNA or something?

WoPeacenGu: Like, Gack, dude, you got any, like, information? Like, where or what it is, which Yeerk is behind it?

Gack74: Visser 5, who I suppose we haven't met yet but are soon going to.

SoccerGabe: To which major visser does #5 hold alliance?

Gack74: Azani wasn't sure, but it thought #2.

YKTwin2: Great. Just great. Not only will this put a definite hamper on our activity, it could also affect the activity of the Chee and Azani itself. Also, we don't really know that much about Visser 2, do we?

Gack74: No kidding. :-O-duh

JoCard3711: Great. :-/

WoPeacenGu: My, like, sentiments exactly, dude.

SoccerGabe: Can we please talk more about this tomorrow? I am majorly tired and what's more, Zody and Devi will kill us if we make plans without them.

SLTwin1: Excellent point.

JoCard3711: I have to watch out. Kevin could awake any minute.

SLTwin1: Well, in that case, later!

YKTwin2: It's been groovy.

JoCard3711: Bye.

So, I logged off. Another night wasted on nothing. I laid down and thought some more about my fantasies of an army against the Yeerks. There had to be some way to find out who else knew about them. There was that site that Jake had talked about in his e-mail, perhaps I would be able to find other Yeerk fighters from there. But right now, what kind of danger was our group in? What I thought Seeley had meant was that if the Yeerks were bothering to come up with this technology, then that meant they suspected that we weren't Andalites. If they found out we were humans...well, the thought just didn't bear thinking about.

  
  


****

Author's notes: Well, thanks for reading the first part of my first fanfiction. I hope to finish it. I know I didn't really introduce the main conflict, but I have an idea as to what I want it to be. Please review if you have something constructive to say, and if you don't like my story, you can say so, but please don't swear at me. Thank you.


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